An investigation into a number of allegations of crime involving the children's charity Kids Company has been launched by the Metropolitan Police, the BBC has learned.

The inquiry is being led by the complex case team of the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Kids Company said it was not aware of the nature of any allegations and its priority was the safety of its clients.

Police want anyone with information or concerns to contact them or the NSPCC.

Kids Company provides practical, emotional and educational support to some of the most deprived and vulnerable inner-city children and young people from across London.

The charity, which was founded in 1996 and also has centres in Liverpool and Bristol, is run by Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Counselling concernsThe investigation into Kids Company was believed to have been triggered by testimony from a former employee given to a BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News investigation.

An independent expert advised the BBC that the claims raised concerns about the safeguarding of young people. Details from the interview were passed on to the authorities, with the individual's consent.

She was one of three former employees who have told BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News about individual serious incidents at two of the charity's sites which they say were not passed on to the police or social services.

Two of these former employees have now been interviewed by the police and the London Borough of Southwark's social services.

The allegations made to the BBC, spanning five years, relate to a small number of incidents. However, the police and local officials fear that, if staff at the charity have failed to pass information on, they need to investigate fully.

There are concerns that young local people may be in need of counselling and support.

Southwark has asked the NSPCC to run a helpline for people who may have been affected.

The charity can be contacted on 0808 800 5000.

'Robust policies'In a statement Kids Company said its "first priority is the safety and security of all the children, young people and adults we support and protect".

It added: "The organisation operates robust policies and procedures that ensure all Kids Company's clients are protected and that staff work safely with clients at all times.

"Kids Company's policies and procedures are externally reviewed regularly by an expert consultant and are governed by a risk sub-committee comprised of senior clinicians and representatives from the board of trustees.

"All allegations of misconduct between Kids Company employees and clients are immediately reported to the police if required."

Earlier this month the charity faced questions about the way it was run and whether government funding would continue.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33726968…………………………………………………………………Yet the Met Police Press release doesn’t even name the charity, but still asks people to contact them with information!Investigation launched into children's charity Jul 30, 2015 18:20 BST

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has today, Thursday, 30 July, commenced an investigation into a number of allegations of crime involving a children's charity.The investigation is being led by officers from the Complex Case Team of the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.Anyone who has information, or concerns is asked to contact the investigating team on 0208 217 6538, or the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000.

The trouble with Kids CompanyIt’s a favourite charity of David Cameron and many celebrities. But does it do what it claims to do?338 CommentsMiles Goslett 14 February 2015 Camila Batmanghelidjh

In 2006, when David Cameron was leader of the opposition, he made an infamous speech that is remembered as an exhortation to hug a hoodie. Feral youth, he said, should be helped rather than demonised. He was reaching towards what he hoped would be a new, ‘compassionate’ conservatism inspired in part by the charismatic social activist Camila Batmanghelidjh.She was the perfect lodestar for the young Tory leader. She began her drop-in centre — the Kids Company — in 1996 and within a few years, was helping thousands of disadvantaged inner-city children. She’s colourful, powerful but also a former Sherborne girl with whom Cameron and other members of the establishment felt at ease. Cameron told his shadow ministers that Camila embodied the Big Society. He suggested they study her work and design policies that reflected it.The cash has rolled in to Kids Company. It has received more than £25 million from the government, and another £4.25 million has just been agreed. Prince Charles is a fan; the rock group Coldplay have donated £8 million. Then there’s Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, Jemima Khan, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, John Lewis and more.Good for Camila Batmanghelidjh, you might say, but there are a number who believe that Kids Company has perhaps grown too quickly and would, despite its undoubted achievements, benefit from a review of its operations and controls. They worry that Kids Company has become too famous, untouchable, and now acts as a drain on well-meaning donations that might otherwise go to better causes. Having investigated the charity for several months, I’m afraid I agree.I first became interested in Kids Company after meeting and writing about a recent benefactor of theirs, Joan Woolard, who sold her house just over a year ago so as to give the proceeds to Kids Company. Less than a year after making her enormous donation, of about £200,000, she became so disillusioned that she complained to the Charity Commission and is demanding back her money. I wrote about Mrs Woolard, a 76-year-old widow from Lincolnshire, for the Oldie magazine. My piece covered her wider life, which included working as a Labour MP’s secretary. But one observation I made was this: ‘What is perhaps most bizarre about this tale is that Joan has no idea what has become of her money. The charity has never informed her how it has been or will be used, despite her being its largest individual donor.’Ms Batmanghelidjh does not take criticism on the chin. She wrote to the then Oldie editor Richard Ingrams insisting he ‘repair’ the ‘incredibly damaging narrative’. She stated Kids Company had ‘worked very carefully’ with Joan for more than a year before accepting the donation.Is that right? Not according to Mrs Woolard: ‘Contrary to what she claims, I never received a personal letter from Camila thanking me for making my donation. I had a few meetings with her in the 15 months before I made my donation but it’s not correct to say I “worked” with her.’So much for hurt feelings — more interesting are Joan’s other misgivings. After the Oldie spat, by way of making up, Joan spent a week volunteering at Kids Company, to see how donations were spent.

One of its therapy centres she attended was the Morgan Stanley Heart Yard in south London. It was bought with £1.6 million given by the London arm of the American investment bank after which it was named and opened by Joanna Lumley. What struck Mrs Woolard was the absence of children. She says: ‘Camila said that the charity is “short of money” because summer is a busy time because so many more children need to be fed and looked after during the school holidays. But I was told by staff that during the summer holidays there are fewer children to look after. I can’t square this fundamental contradiction.’Nor, as it happens can some other former senior members of Kids Company, who claim that there are ‘exaggerations’ in the numbers of people it says it helps. In the charity’s annual reports, the numbers increased from 13,500 in 2008 to 16,500 in 2010 before jumping to an astonishing 36,000 the next year. That figure of 36,000 has been used in Kids Company literature ever since, but some ex-staff members have questioned it. In response to this, the charity stated it uses a computer system tracking all the children, young people and families with which it works, recording why money was spent on them and what outcome arose, and that the earlier figures were under-estimates.This all sounds very professional, but it turns out it is not just children who are included in the much-touted 36,000. In an email to me the charity wrote: ‘When we refer to clients they include children, young people, young adults with special needs, carers, i.e. foster parents or parents who predominantly have mental health difficulties, and school staff.’ Strange to include parents and school staff in the number of those helped. <a href="http://adserver.adtech.de/adlink/3.0/903/5135762/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;grp=59304" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtech.de/adserv/3.0/903/5135762/0/0/ADTECH;loc=300;grp=59304" border="0" width="0" height="0"/></a> On to Joan’s next concern, which she heard from staff in Kids Company HQ. Some employees are former ‘clients’ — people helped by the charity itself when younger — and the complaint from regular staff was that some of these former clients did not bother turning up to work. Joan told me: ‘One girl had apparently swanned off for the whole summer, to the obvious annoyance of colleagues. I was also told that others who visit the charity are given cash allowances to supplement their Jobseekers’ Allowances and to prevent them from stealing or dealing drugs. I don’t think private donors or the government give Kids Company money so that it can be handed out to young people in cash?’When I put this to Ms Batmanghelidjh, she said: ‘Money is only spent on the most destitute of our clients.’ She said this included ‘trafficked mothers’ unable to access welfare despite having children born in the UK, and young people in education who ‘receive food vouchers and a bus pass’. She said: ‘I want to be very clear that at no time have we paid or do we pay clients to come to us.’However, I’ve spoken to former Kids Company employees who might disagree. I’ve also spoken to a former Kids Company member of staff, Genevieve Maitland Hudson, who left the charity in 2009. She told me that young people were given cash and travel cards. She said: ‘On Fridays in 2008, little packages of cash were handed out to every young person through a window in the Urban Academy reception. It was always tense. There were tears. There was shouting. There were threats. There were fights.’ What prompted Genevieve to leave Kids Company was not the challenging work and certainly not the young people, about whom she has only good things to say, but the ‘culture’ of the charity.Finally, last August — six weeks after it was promised — Joan Woolard received the report setting out where her money had gone. It had been overseen and written off personally by Ms Batmanghelidjh. But instead of allaying the widow’s concerns, it only increased them. Five of its 11 pages were simply photographs of children. Within the text were three boxes referring to what her money had bought. This included the claim that £44,181 of her donation went on ‘the entirety of our food budget at Kenbury [one of its London centres] between September and December 2013’.Mrs Woolard found this odd. A Kids Company report produced for the government — covering the period 2011 to 2013 — had stated: ‘In the past year, £174,379 was spent providing meals at four of our centres’ — including Kenbury. This suggested that the average monthly budget for each of the four centres was only £3,600. Yet according to the report given to Mrs Woolard, the monthly average for Kenbury during the period her money was spent on food there was £11,045 — three times higher. The charity says it’s confident about its figures.Its special report for Mrs Woolard stated that Kids Company fed ‘approximately 3,000 children each week’. An article in the Evening Standard last October also stated that the Kenbury Street centre serves 3,000 hot meals each week.The figures are confusing. Are 450 youngsters being fed a meal there daily — a total of 3,000 meals a week? Or are 3,000 youngsters getting one meal there each per week? Mrs Woolard tried to find out by visiting the Kenbury Street centre unannounced. She estimated that the dining space had enough room for 60 people at any one time. To serve 3,000 meals per week would require seven separate sittings per day, seven days a week. She feels these numbers just do not add up.Camila Batmanghelidjh dismissed my concerns about the treatment of Mrs Woolard, saying in email: ‘We have been concerned about Joan Woolard and her mental health. A few months back we discussed our concerns with the Charity Commission and placed the evidence with them.’ Quite apart from the distasteful nature of the accusation, and the fact that I found Joan Woolard to be perfectly sane, the question remains: if Kids Company really thinks Joan Woolard might be mentally unwell, doesn’t it have a duty to return her £200,000?Camila Batmanghelidjh claims that Kids Company has an open-door policy, and she invited me to spend time there, as Mrs Woolard had. I daresay I’d be charmed by Camila, as so many others have been. But I’m not sure a casual day-long visit is the solution for Kids Company. Like other charities in receipt of vast sums of taxpayers’ money, it needs to be able to demonstrate to donors — and the outside world — that the money is being used as well as possible, however worthy the objectives. If a government department, say, or a donor like Joan Woolard or a former staff member has concerns about a charity, they must be properly addressed.Charm is no substitute for transparency. Or at least it ought not to be. Officials in the Department for Education, for instance, were so unimpressed by Kids Company’s financial management that they persuaded ministers to stop millions in funding. Ms Batmanghelidhjh’s response was to contact the Prime Minister, who personally intervened with the Department for Education to make sure Kids Company got its cash. Not a word of the argument leaked.Who can blame Camila for fighting for her charity? But this sequence of events exemplifies the problem: if you’re too well connected for anyone to criticise you, if you’re always pulling strings, you risk losing transparency and therefore accountability — however well intentioned you are

____________________"WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER" - Rebekah Brooks to David Cameron

Hi to all, I have read today that Camila is being brought under pressure by Government person's, that she has informed the Government of abuses being instigated by Elite people and has/is prepared to offer the names of these people, is this part of a Witch hunt against her?

@willowthewisp wrote:Hi to all, I have read today that Camila is being brought under pressure by Government person's, that she has informed the Government of abuses being instigated by Elite people and has/is prepared to offer the names of these people, is this part of a Witch hunt against her?

Why doesn't she give the info. to a newspaper or put it on line I wonder?

KC 'got' £3 million, 6 DAYS ago, and £800,000 of 'that' went straight on 'staff COSTS'! (so they 'say')

Against charity 'rules'.

NOW, KC 'might' close.

Police should NOW 'move in', immediately, imo, and keep a 'beady' on the other £2.2 MILLION of the £3 million KC got, last week.

Remind me, WHO else was 'threatened' (persuaded?) with 'exposure'(front page every day) with regards to not 'supporting' another high profile 'case'

(rhetorical)

Looking like Cameron was not ONLY 'mesmerised' by 'Bat' woman.!-----------------------------------------------

Lord Sewer:

On David Cameron: “He’s the most facile, SUPERFICIAL Prime Minister there has ever been,” claiming that “he just shoots from the hip” (I'd say 'LIP') and makes one-off commitments that “he cannot deliver on”.

Tim Loughton, ex Children's 'minister' (DoE), 'I OPPOSED the 'funding' to KC, but, in 'the end' the decision was taken out of my hands, and No 10 decided the money 'should be paid' and the 'grant' carried on' ------------------------------------------------

600 employees, overdue wages and government/taxpayer investment. Now suspend outrage for a moment and look at Missing People charity. The UK police are currently saying they don't have the resources to deal with missing people/children. Missing People have been lobbying for a long time to take on the job. Welcome to the child industry. If it can be called a charity and things go wrong the government can wash its hands of all responsibility, close it down, look good and spout endless rhetoric.

Hi jeanmonroe, see how they run!I know it is not funny but, picture in your head if you can and the children's nursery Rhyme, "Three Blind Mice" with Camila playing the farmers wife,Cameron, Gove and Osbourne as the Mice, see how they run!!?

Worth re-reading The Spectator article posted on Page 1, but a couple of highlights:

One of its therapy centres……..in south London…….bought with £1.6 million given by the London arm of the American investment bank…………What struck Mrs Woolard was the absence of children.

…….other former senior members of Kids Company, who claim that there are ‘exaggerations’ in the numbers of people it says it helps……..

Kenbury Street centre serves 3,000 hot meals each week……….estimated that the dining space had enough room for 60 people at any one time. To serve 3,000 meals per week would require seven separate sittings per day, seven days a week. She feels these numbers just do not add up.

Maybe they employ the same people to do the figures as ‘Missing People’!

600 employees, overdue wages and government/taxpayer investment. Now suspend outrage for a moment and look at Missing People charity. The UK police are currently saying they don't have the resources to deal with missing people/children. Missing People have been lobbying for a long time to take on the job. Welcome to the child industry. If it can be called a charity and things go wrong the government can wash its hands of all responsibility, close it down, look good and spout endless rhetoric.

Welcome to the child industry.

Welcome to the child industry

Couldn't have put it better myself. Another childcare org on news today with what looked like an 'almost' indoctrinated young person, spouting out verbatim "policy statements", "joined up thinking" "working in partnership" , "holistic approach" etc etc Seemed to be coming from an "I've been there" angle?? Thus doubly validating the continuing of the "much needed funding" , "increased awareness" , blah blah blah

When one comes to an end another pops up in its place. God help us all. Recently heard Barnardo's were back in the good books??? They are now in the frontline in the "fight against child exploitation". Have they been investigated or is that all going to brushed under the carpet as the next wave of the "ever growing" "Missing Person Crisis!" washes over us?? "Crisis, after Crisis, keep it all going, all the tops spinning, that way on one will notice or have the opportunity / time to investigate."

Visited my Mum recently, found the battered old copy of 1984 I read that had scared me so much as a kid / young adult. (...the one priced 3'6 with the eyeball on the front!) Suggested my other half read it. She is not British, but the things she commented on were newspeak, Big Brother, the constant war / propaganda, and immediately after reading said: "Wasn't it amazing he wrote this in 1947?" I said "Yeah, just after the war...." looking at recent revelations re: c s a, testing on humans post WW2, the world order etc etc it would seem instead of destroying the Nazi's diabolical experiments/ ideology we just carried them on.

I think, MP's should ask WHY, TM/DC, unquestionably, CONTINUE to 'fund' a 'taxpayer' £14.3 million ongoing 'investigation' without a scintilla of 'evidence' that ONE child was ever 'abducted' in Portugal, over 8 years ago.

Madeleine McCann is 'kept', imo, as a 'defensive' shield, against 'bad news' Government 'stories'

The 'Scum' has one today! ('5 false sightings' of Madeleine)

WAY TOO LATE, RUPE! KC 'story' on Newsnight, YESTERDAY

Do NOT be 'surprised' IF a 'Maddie' exclusiff, is all over the 'papers' TOMORROW, to 'detract' from DC's 'involvement' in KC.

Call me 'Mystic' Jean, if you like!

Like KM said 'i mean, i might be totally wrong, she could be a lot closer to the UK, than, than here'

Nor, as it happens can some other former senior members of Kids Company, who claim that there are ‘exaggerations’ in the numbers of people it says it helps. In the charity’s annual reports, the numbers increased from 13,500 in 2008 to 16,500 in 2010 before jumping to an astonishing 36,000 the next year. That figure of 36,000 has been used in Kids Company literature ever since, but some ex-staff members have questioned it. In response to this, the charity stated it uses a computer system tracking all the children, young people and families with which it works, recording why money was spent on them and what outcome arose, and that the earlier figures were under-estimates.

This all sounds very professional, but it turns out it is not just children who are included in the much-touted 36,000. In an email to me the charity wrote: ‘When we refer to clients they include children, young people, young adults with special needs, carers, i.e. foster parents or parents who predominantly have mental health difficulties, and school staff.’ Strange to include parents and school staff in the number of those helped.-------------------------------------------

BOTH BBC and SKY News have been 'quoting' the 36,000 'figure' on their 'reports'.

The 'odd' thing i refer to, is there was '16,500' people KC 'helped' in 2010 which 'increased' in ONE year (2011) by an 'astonishing' 19,500 'people' BUT has NOT 'increased' by a SINGLE 'extra' person, since.

So, 'people' helped by KC from 2008-2011 = up to 36,000. (a year)

But from 2011-2015, not a SINGLE 'increase' (in 'people' helped) from 2011 'figure'